Jonathan Tweet, one of the designed of 3E and the designer of the 13th Age did a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) yesterday and I found something interesting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3oq1iy/im_rpg_designer_jonathan_tweet_lead_designer_on/
QuoteThat's a big question, and I'll probably be able to answer several follow up questions on this topic.
I'm proud of 3E, and I'm glad that Paizo rescued it when Wizards ditched it. I like a lot of the improvements that 4E made, but I was not happy with the overall package. With 3E, we tried hard to make the game feel more like D&D than 2E did, but 4E made the game feel less like D&D, actually less than 2E. A problem with 3E was too many player options and not enough balance. A problem with 4E was too few player options and too much balance.
It's hard for me to play 3E these days because the balance issues are too clear to me. I'm not really interested in playing 4E, either, because it's too boardgamey. 5E has some surprisingly nice bits, but it doesn't seemed tuned for the serious play that my group engages in. That's why Rob Heinsoo and I wrote 13th Age.
I may be really stupid but I wasn't familiar with the 13th Age prior to this AMA. I have read the 5E books and played through the starter adventure as well as the Dragon Queen module. I have played 2E extensively.
I checked out the 13th Age website and it doesn't seem, to me, to be a call back to AD&D (1E) and it seems to me not in the same vein both in play and in tone. Am I missing something? Should I pick up the book? I enjoy D&D to play like AD&D (1E/2E). 5E does that, for me, more so than 3E did and certainly more than 4E.
Sounds like Tweets usual spindoctoring to promote his latest whatever. This is nothing new.
He's wrong about 5E. As for his system, I purchased a copy, read it, then gave it away. It's a better version of 4E, but it still feels like 4E to me.
I think 13th Age is a 4E that sorta works.
JG
Quote from: James Gillen;860217I think 13th Age is a 4E that sorta works.
JG
That would be 4e D&D Gamma World.
No. Really. One of the most common good things people say about the game, after saying how much they hate the not-GW-setting, is that it was a 4e that worked.
YMMV of course.
It may feel more like D&D to Tweet, although in comparison to what he says about 2E later on, it seems to be missing nudity, occultism, and general grime and foulness in comparison to his ideal. :) But that AMA suggested several things to me, among them:
1) "D&D feel" can vary substantially depending on when, where and how one started with the game.
2) Let me take 4E, the 2E settings, and a few other odds and ends, and I'll happily leave 'D&D' to the OSR, Tweet, Mearls and the other Gygaxolators. :)
Quote from: Ulairi;860205I may be really stupid but I wasn't familiar with the 13th Age prior to this AMA. I have read the 5E books and played through the starter adventure as well as the Dragon Queen module. I have played 2E extensively.
I checked out the 13th Age website and it doesn't seem, to me, to be a call back to AD&D (1E) and it seems to me not in the same vein both in play and in tone. Am I missing something? Should I pick up the book? I enjoy D&D to play like AD&D (1E/2E). 5E does that, for me, more so than 3E did and certainly more than 4E.
He has rules to sell so he going to spin it like rules will fix your problems.
The problem he refers to is not rules but how people use the rules. The only thing that fixes that is people behaving differently. Which is of no use if you have rulebooks to sell.
You should buy 13th age for itself. Based on whether you like how the setting flows with the mechanics. If you have problem like rules lawyering or the feel of the game then 13th Age (or any RPG for that matter) is not going to fix it.
It seems to be the general marketing push for 13th Age that it is 'more D&D than D&D'... or something. That's the sort of thing I keep reading from it's fans.
Funny that the descriptions of it I've read don't sound like D&D at all to me... or rather, it sounds like D&D for people who think they're too hip to be playing D&D.
13th age is a cool, west coast, couisin. he drives great car, has great stories but when he gets drunk he lets the cool facade slip and he can be too much like that 4e guy.
I asked around on Twitter and was told it resembles a midway point between 3.5 and 4E.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;860287I asked around on Twitter and was told it resembles a midway point between 3.5 and 4E.
Character generation is midway between 3.5 and 4th.
But the fact that it uses abstract range bands made it feel very different to me in actual play.
It's a tall order and slightly arrogant to say "My game is more like Dungeons and Dragons than 5th edition is".
I can't say I agree with his statement.
Tweet as usual is full of shit and trying to peddle his substandard fantasy game as some new form d&d for hipsters and the dispossessed leftovers of the 4vengers bunch, it's about as d&d as 4e was at it's worst and 3.x was at its high point of rules nonsense...i'll stick with 1e or 5e since they actually are d&d and do a far superior job at being that than 13th age will ever manage.
I was reading that AMA yesterday and just laughed. Everytime someone brought up 5e he just had to verbally bait and switch to 13th Age so blatantly.
I get he's got a game to sell. But he definitely is too dismissive of 5e. And personally I'm with most of you - it's plays like a 4e hack.
I will note it's good to see some contrition on his part about 3.x - the amount of flack I've gotten making those same accusations, especially when debating this shit with Mearls and editorial at Paizo when we were both doing features for them, was frustrating to say the least. Don't get me started on the fanboys of 3.x/PF...
Quote from: tenbones;860304I will note it's good to see some contrition on his part about 3.x - the amount of flack I've gotten making those same accusations, especially when debating this shit with Mearls and editorial at Paizo when we were both doing features for them, was frustrating to say the least. Don't get me started on the fanboys of 3.x/PF...
The joys of being on the other side of the desk in the gaming biz. Few players have even the slightest idea of how fucked up things can be from the designer and publisher side.
Quote from: Omega;860320The joys of being on the other side of the desk in the gaming biz. Few players have even the slightest idea of how fucked up things can be from the designer and publisher side.
There is a certain book that exists that I was asked to co-write and it was a HUGE amount (like 40k words in two and a half weeks). It was for Goodman Games and Joe and I had talked about my problems with 3.x and I wanted to try and push the ante in small ways by creating beefy 5-level PrC's with non-standard saves and abilities.
The 3.x orthodoxy raked me over the coals for it. Most reviews liked what Mearls and I did - but I ain't gonna lie, it was a tough assignment and long nights.
My overall goal was to beef up the non-casters by creating very powerful prestige classes that frontloaded a lot of benefits in order to give them more flexibility down the line. One of my big influences at the time was d20 Swashbuckling Adventures. Their PrC's are *very* powerful in a low-magic setting. The assumptions being that for SOME reason, people actually thought casters were in balance with non-casters. Anyone that did *any* kind of design in 3.x could/should have known it was nowhere near the case.
Well ENWorld was not very kind. Joe came to bat for me - to his credit. He did understand what I was trying to do and liked it, but the institutionalized minds of the 3.x fandom had already calcified. I still stand by it to this day.
TL/DR - I disagree with 90% of Tweet's views on 5e and his own game 13th generation. But his contrition on how fucked up 3e is gives me a little bit of closure. Not that it changed how I ran games. It made me realize how much I'd come to dislike what D&D and later Pathfinder had become.
I think 5E is more similar to 1E/2E (which are fundamentally the same game) and I can see the lineage when I play 5E. Tweet kind of turned me off on his game but I guess I'm really not his audience.
Quote from: James Gillen;860217I think 13th Age is a 4E that sorta works.
JG
That's about right, I think.
Quote from: Ulairi;860205I checked out the 13th Age website and it doesn't seem, to me, to be a call back to AD&D (1E) and it seems to me not in the same vein both in play and in tone. Am I missing something? Should I pick up the book? I enjoy D&D to play like AD&D (1E/2E). 5E does that, for me, more so than 3E did and certainly more than 4E.
Its core mechanics are a pleasant variant of 3E. Tweet is right that some balance issues have been addressed, but they've done that largely by completely gimping the spell lists (which means that it doesn't feel like D&D to me). Heinsoo brings in a large sampling of 4E's "dissociated for no real purpose whatsoever" mechanics, but they're not quite as all-encompassing and horrible as 4E.
If you've got a bunch of 3E and 4E gamers glaring angrily at each other, you might be able to use 13th Age to convince them to all sit down and begrudgingly play a game together. Otherwise, I don't really understand what the point of it is supposed to be.
Quote from: Omega;860222That would be 4e D&D Gamma World.
No. Really. One of the most common good things people say about the game, after saying how much they hate the not-GW-setting, is that it was a 4e that worked.
4E D&D Gamma World took the worst aspects of 4E and doubled down on them (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/8456/roleplaying-games/dd-gamma-world).
(It does, OTOH, have some truly kickass character creation mechanics.)
Quote from: Ulairi;860205Jonathan Tweet, one of the designed of 3E and the designer of the 13th Age did a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) yesterday and I found something interesting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3oq1iy/im_rpg_designer_jonathan_tweet_lead_designer_on/
I may be really stupid but I wasn't familiar with the 13th Age prior to this AMA. I have read the 5E books and played through the starter adventure as well as the Dragon Queen module. I have played 2E extensively.
I checked out the 13th Age website and it doesn't seem, to me, to be a call back to AD&D (1E) and it seems to me not in the same vein both in play and in tone. Am I missing something? Should I pick up the book? I enjoy D&D to play like AD&D (1E/2E). 5E does that, for me, more so than 3E did and certainly more than 4E.
He doesn't seem to be claiming that 5e doesn't feel like D&D. He seems to be saying this about 2e, which is weird since mechanically 2e is 99% the same as previous editions. And about 4e, which is fair enough - I'm a 4e fan but it does not play anything like what I consider "D&D" to me.
Quote from: tenbones;86030413th Age (...) plays like a 4e hack.
Which shouldn't come as a big surprise - it
is 4e: The Directors Cut.
It is what 4e should have been from the get-go: its own game, separate from the D&D brand. And it's quite sad that they still piggyback on the D&D name, or define themselves in D&D's shade, instead of letting the game shine on its own merits.
Earthdawn was built on a lot of D&D assumptions but tried desperately to hide them - and succeeded. While 13th Age desperately tries to be - as Simlasa and Tahmoh put it - "Hipster D&D".
What will happen to it when the hipster crowd moves on?
I think I glanced at the playtest files before the game was finished, but I don't remember much. The one thing that sort of interests me is the Icons. I get they are powerful NPCs. How do they work?
Icons work like influence over those npcs, or using that relationship to influence others. Say you went with cleric whose domain is love and you got two points in favorable with the Emperor for being his mistress. Guards are blocking people from a town of sick people to stop a plague. You roll 2d6 and on success the guards let you through because they don't want to piss off the Emperor's mistress.
That is how I took it.
Quote from: Arminius;860406I think I glanced at the playtest files before the game was finished, but I don't remember much. The one thing that sort of interests me is the Icons. I get they are powerful NPCs. How do they work?
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=30153
QuoteThis chapter (2) also goes over the mechanics on a character's icon relationships. At 1st level each character gets 3 relationship points (which will increase at certain levels). For a given icon you can choose to have a positive, negative or "conflicted" relationship. The number of points you spend on a given icon determines how close and/or how positive the relationship is. (The game assumes generally heroic characters, and normally doesn't let you have 3-point relationships with villains like the Lich King; at best you could get a 1-point connection that gives you some allies in the villainous camp but can also be a liability when dealing with heroic types who question that character's associations). In mechanical terms, each point gives a 6-sided die that is rolled in certain circumstances, where a 6 equals success on the roll and a 5 is something that draws the icon's attention but can also complicate the PC's life. Exactly HOW all this works is not made clear here- the reader is referred to the "running the game" section at page 179.
Thanks, I found your review yesterday, and it gave me a pretty good picture. Although I appreciate the concept, I have to say I'm not particularly impressed with the execution at least as described. In fact, it doesn't really seem to offer much of anything that (for example) various GURPS Advantages and Disadvantages do.
I really enjoy 13th Age and its a great fantasy RPG. The whole "feels like D&D" is subjective to each player and I believe is deeply tied to which edition you played first. For me, 5e doesn't "feel" like D&D, but who cares?
BTW, 13th Age has a great organized play campaign available free online. Loads of some really fun adventures. What I like about 13th Age vs. Living RPGA is the GM is empowered to alter / customize / enhance the 13th Age events AND the events change based on the Icon relationships by the PCs at the table and their One Unique Things as well.
"(The popular edition of D&D) ...doesn't seemed tuned for the serious play that my group engages in."
LOL.
How 1982.
I played in a 13th Age campaign for around a year and a half, starting off with some playtest and then running through the eventual publication of the game.
I like 13th Age. It seems a lot like a 4E/5E blend but I like it a lot better than 4E. The problem we had was that (1) 13th Age didn't put out much product for a long time, and (2) the local game store wanted to support 5E and no longer allowed non-5E games to be run in-store. We played a couple of times at someone's house, but effectively the campaign died with 5E came out. There are some elements of 13th Age that I like better than 5E. The escalation die was pretty neat and some of the classes seemed cooler than their 5E equivalent. Plus, they made some awesome adventures which they gave out for free and I think were much better written than the 5E hardbacks that the store sells.
I really wish they had created more product to sell faster because they might have "scooped" 5E since 13th Age came out 6 months or so before 5E. They had an opportunity to steal the market but dropped the ball. Now 5E rules all again. I really miss the old 13th Age campaign.
13th age looks pretty cool, but it's just weird that there's no rules for vision.
Quote from: finarvyn;860762I played in a 13th Age campaign for around a year and a half, starting off with some playtest and then running through the eventual publication of the game.
I like 13th Age. It seems a lot like a 4E/5E blend but I like it a lot better than 4E. The problem we had was that (1) 13th Age didn't put out much product for a long time, and (2) the local game store wanted to support 5E and no longer allowed non-5E games to be run in-store.
Really?
If there is a faster way to get me to swear off a game, it's probably not within the abilities of any of the local stores.
And while I understand his opinion on 2e, I'll join the group that says that what feels like D&D depends strongly on the players.
Tweet co-founded White Wolf with Mark Rein•Hagen.
I can't quite fault him for beating the old "games for mature minds" drum — hell, it's probably just what 4e fans want to hear — but I'm not sure it's going to earn him any cachet outside the echo chamber.
I know very little about the man, but based strictly on the OP's quote, he does sounds like a pretentious douche. Jonathan Twat is more like it.
Quote from: Arminius;860655Thanks, I found your review yesterday, and it gave me a pretty good picture. Although I appreciate the concept, I have to say I'm not particularly impressed with the execution at least as described. In fact, it doesn't really seem to offer much of anything that (for example) various GURPS Advantages and Disadvantages do.
Again, I found 13th Age very vague, compared to a point-buy system like Hero or GURPS, but the dice mechanic is the kind of thing that (I suppose) helps people get into the spirit of the concept.
JG
Quote from: AsenRG;860855Really?
If there is a faster way to get me to swear off a game, it's probably not within the abilities of any of the local stores.
And while I understand his opinion on 2e, I'll join the group that says that what feels like D&D depends strongly on the players.
I can understand someone not liking 2E but it is AD&D. Moreso than any edition after
IIRC I actually played in a game of Tweet's once, in the 80s, when I was in my early teens and he was playtesting Ars Magica and Whimsy Cards at a small regional con in Astoria, Illinois.
As much as I sometimes take smartass potshots at some of the games he designed I remember him (very vaguely) as a cool, fun guy.
Tweet is very hard to pin down.
http://therpghaven.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=499&start=230
http://www.the-prussian-gamer.de/index.php?topic=1746.msg35630#msg35630
(Also got some airing here.)
Quote from: Ulairi;860876I can understand someone not liking 2E but it is AD&D. Moreso than any edition after
On another thread in this forum someone called 2e books "dry and apologetic". That's exactly the definition I was looking at when posting, but I didn't find it at the time:).
And "dry and apologetic" are exactly the two sins I can't accept in any book that pretends to be D&D, so I suspect that while it might have had similar mechanics, it probably lead to a quite different playstyle;).
2E the game (Meaning the actual thing that happens at the table with your friends) is way, way, way better than 2E the books, which had some really ugly internal design and and that hard-to-describe "Apologetic" thing going on.
Quote5E has some surprisingly nice bits, but it doesn't seemed tuned for the serious play that my group engages in. That's why Rob Heinsoo and I wrote 13th Age.
*shudder* What the flying fuck does this even mean?
"Serious" play? It's the 90s all over again!
Other than that, 13th Age is a fun game and would 5E not have been released, I would be running it now.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;8610362E the game (Meaning the actual thing that happens at the table with your friends) is way, way, way better than 2E the books, which had some really ugly internal design and and that hard-to-describe "Apologetic" thing going on.
I agree. 2E gets some undeserved bad rep.
My main gripes with 2E:
1) The books make it seem like an uber-slick version of 1E
2) It tried to further codify D&D
Quote from: Arminius;860891Tweet is very hard to pin down.
http://therpghaven.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=499&start=230
http://www.the-prussian-gamer.de/index.php?topic=1746.msg35630#msg35630
(Also got some airing here.)
Wait, Malcolm Shepperd, aka Eyebeamz, is Jonathon Tweet?
I may have to give 13th Age a try. That being said, I never felt D&D had a specific "feel". Its about as generic a fantasy role-playing game as you can get (regardless of edition) and have very few ACTUAL distinguishing factors that set it high and above any other non-D&D fantasy RPG. I really think that its generic nature is its biggest feature.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;8610362E the game (Meaning the actual thing that happens at the table with your friends) is way, way, way better than 2E the books, which had some really ugly internal design and and that hard-to-describe "Apologetic" thing going on.
What happens at the table obviously varies between groups, and I can attest that the first time I tried RPGs, it was with 2e, and I almost gave up on the idea of RPGs altogether.
I have played and GMed 13th and enjoyed that a lot and people I know have told this game is lot like D&D 4.
Ironicaly, the French version of 13th Age was a commercial failure and the publisher stopped futher releases of this game one year after its initial release in France. Meanwhile, untranslated version of D&D 5 sells well in France. Maybe the facts that 7ème Cercle seems to be hellbent on assaulting the French Language by not doing their proofing job right and also do little to encourage a online community to emerge (in contrast of what Pelgrane does) are something to do with it.
Quote from: James Gillen;860217I think 13th Age is a 4E that sorta works.
Yeah, basically. 13th Age has some cool bits that add a bit of wonder back to the game and make it a bit less "boardgamey", but it's still in the 4e "enclave". It's playable and I've had some fun with it, but I still don't like the 4e-like structure that is the basis of the characters. I'll play in the games of friends who run it, but I'll probably never run it.
Ripping off some of its cooler non-4e inspired hacks like the archtypes and "one unique thing", however, is something I am okay with.
Quote from: One Horse Town;861056Wait, Malcolm Shepperd, aka Eyebeamz, is Jonathon Tweet?
Hah, no. Malcolm quoted JoT (and apparently agreed with him).
What exactly did 13th Age fix about 4E that 4E didn't have "working"?
Quote from: Arminius;861440Hah, no. Malcolm quoted JoT (and apparently agreed with him).
Thank goodness for that!
13th Age is really cool but absolutely nothing like AD&D 2E.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;861441What exactly did 13th Age fix about 4E that 4E didn't have "working"?
I enjoy 4e, but 13th Age lets you skip the board and keeps the action moving. It's even less about builds, and the core classes are more flavorful.
Also, 13th Age has a range of PC complexity so players who like crunch have more crunchy classes and players who just want to read nothing more than their character sheet have equally good choices.
When I've played 13th Age, it felt less constrained than 4e and the freeform aspect worked great for our group. I'd play a campaign, but I'd have to run it a couple more time before deciding if it works for me.
In what fucking way does 5e not encourage "serious play"? More specifically, how does 13th age do anything more "Serious"?
Quote from: RPGPundit;862512In what fucking way does 5e not encourage "serious play"? More specifically, how does 13th age do anything more "Serious"?
Granted this is my own attempt at understanding the notion but perhaps its due to the total amount of time invested when it comes creating and growing your character mechanically as well as time invested playing it. If the options at char-gen and each level increment is more minimal than what you're used too, it can feel incomplete and thus, less "serious".
I don't think Serious is the correct word to use here because of course its as serious as the player/DM/group makes it and its not dependent on any specific edition. Maybe more in-depth or Crunchy might be more appropriate? I get it, to a degree, that the less mechanical selection can leave a player used to it like "so....that's it? I'm done?"
Dev shilling aside, 13th Age is a VERY functional version of 4E and I really like it. What helps is all you need is the core book but getting True Ways and Bestiary do help and give useful options. Ya, it's a 4E hack, but it's a damn good 4E hack.
The apparent referent for D&D per se is the TSR line prior to AD&D 2nd Edition. Thing is, I played with the 2E rules when they first came out -- having played for years with the earlier editions going right back to the original -- and the differences were about as subtle as among those!
The actual game variation from one campaign to another was where things of real significance appeared; beside that, the abstractions in the books were close enough to the same. Really, one could not say what edition of the books was in use without seeing it.
In recent years, I've been in a group that mixed the AD&D editions, along with BX and BECM (and with one GM, some stuff from 3E). It is really not a big deal!
With the WotC editions, each very much draws attention to itself as a different game, as much from the old game as from each other that Wizards has produced. I would be mighty surprised if the same does not hold for 13th Age.
We just played 13th Age on Thursdays and 5e on Sundays for over a year.
They are both D&D, but I'd say 5e feels more like how I remember BECMI which I ran and played as a kid. 13th Age is much more high powered and less fiddly, but I suspect that it's less like AD&D or 3e than some would like.
They're both very fine games, and 13th Age's light narrative overlay suits me very well. On the other hand I liked the slightly more trad and extensive skill list in 5e, and the excellent advantage/disadvantage rules.
There is more book keeping in 5e, and it's better suited to minis. If you want minis-free then 13th Age handles that better.
You could cut and paste bits of one to the other, like the escalation die, the advantage/disadvantage thing, inspiration and maybe the more trad skill list or the looser one.
But I think Jonathan was being a bit of a spin doctor, and the 'serious' comment is badly judged, but hey.. he's a good designer and done some great games and 13th is a very good game..
as is 5e..